10
PARTISAN REVIEW
one-dimensional, over-simplified piece by Dennis Wrong in a recent
issue of
Commentary
ostensibly presenting a capsule history of New
York intellectual life. Most of its fire is directed against the
New York
Review of Books,
though many people get a going over and
PR
too is
accused of deviating from an arbitrary political norm that is somewhat
hazy but turns out to be right of center. True, many of the things Wrong
said were right. But much of his argument rests on ignoring the differ–
ences between diverse people and positions, on a hasty disposal of com–
plicated questions, particularly literary ones, and on a vague, under–
lying assumption that all forms of radicalism amount to intellectual
be–
trayal. In this respect, Wrong's piece is typical of the new conservative
polemics - it raises questions only about the left, not about the right,
not about the state of the country, which is presumably what the left is
responding to. The ideological justification for this kind of argument
is the belief that the left is the main threat, an appraisal that exaggerates
the power of the puny left and minimizes the massive power of big
business, the force of backward and provincial opinion throughout the
country and the strength of various arms of the government.
The Vietnam Riddle.
A number of commentators have pointed out
how mad the
Ind~Chinese
expedition i:;; even from the point of view
of the Pentagon and the Administration - so mad it sometimes seems
to lack the logic of madness. It's surprising, though, how restrained the
far right has been in exploiting the dilemma of the government. (The
Calley case may be the signal it has been waiting for.) For if the Asian
communists must be stopped, if the war is justifiable, then Washington
could be accused of betraying the national interest in not going all out.
Its plight is that it plunged into a war it cannot "win," because of its
fear of escalation and its failure to comprehend the political situation
in Indo-China, yet one it thinks it cannot afford to lose. Hence the
dragging on of the war is not just a blunder that the government is
committed to but a predicament that it is trapped in by its continued
policies of equivocation. The future of the country depends on whether
this kind of political stupidity is accidental or built into the system.
Conservatism is Catching.
As if to prove the instability of thinking
in this country the pendulum swings back and forth every few years.
Recently there have been a number of attacks, some quite venomous,
on the youth, the students, the left, and on newer trends in writing and
painting, all part of a cultural swing to the right mostly on the part of
middle-aged writers with special attachments to some
per~od
or move–
ment in the past.
It
has been argued that this turn is of little significance,
that it represents mainly the disgruntlement of a few aging people who
refuse to face the present. But I think it is a symptom of something
deeper. And, regardless of how much weight history eventually will
assign to it, it does have an immediate importance, if for no other
reason than that people are infected by what's in the air. Hence you
